EUGÈNE DELACROIX

The man who began all this street fighting was a Frenchman—Eugène Delacroix. While still a youth he was bullied, and the bully was such a redoubtable giant that it took somebody with the grit and genius of Delacroix to tackle him, but tackle him he did. The story of the fight, which is a long and glorious one, is so admirably told in Madame Bussy's life of Delacroix, that I have obtained permission to give the essence of it in her own words.

In the Salon of 1822 was exhibited Delacroix's picture of Dante and Virgil, which is now in the Louvre, and evoked the first of those clamours of abuse which were barely stilled before the artist's death. For nearly thirty years all French painters, with the exception of Gros and Prudhon; had shown themselves unquestioning disciples of the school founded by Jacques Louis David, whose masterful character and potent personality had reduced all art to a system; and Delacroix himself spoke of him with sympathy and admiration. The chief dogma of David's school was that the nearest approach to the beau idealpermitted to the human race had been attained by the Greeks, and that all art must conform as closely as possible to theirs. Unfortunately, the chief specimens of Greek art known at that time were those belonging to a decadent period—neither the Elgin marbles nor the Venus of Milo were accessible before 1816—so that the works from which they drew their inspiration were without character in themselves, or merely the feeble and attenuated copies of ancient Rome. In the pictures of this school, accordingly, we find only the monotonous perfection of rounded and well-modelled limbs, classical features and straight noses. Colour, to the sincere Davidian, was a vain and frivolous accessory, serving only to distract attention from the real purpose of the work, which was to aim at moral elevation as well as at ideal beauty. Everything in the picture was to be equally dwelt upon; there was no sacrifice, no mystery. "These pictures," says Delacroix, "have no epidermis ...they lack the atmosphere, the lights, the reflections which blend into an harmonious whole, objects the most dissimilar in colour."

By the untimely death of Géricault, whose Raft of the Medusa had already caused a flutter in 1819, Delacroix was left at the head of the revolt against this pseudo-classicism; and amid the storm that greeted the Dante and Virgil it is interesting to find Thiers writing of him in the following strain:—"It seems to me that no picture [in the Salon] reveals the future of a great painter better than M. Delacroix's, in which we see an outbreak of talent, a burst of rising superiority which revives the hopes that had been slightly discouraged by the too moderate merits of all the rest.... I think I am not mistaken; M. Delacroix has genius; let him go on with confidence, and devote himself to immense labour, the indispensable condition of talent." Delécluze, by the by, the critic-in-chief of the Davidian School, had characterised the picture as une véritable tartouillade.

In 1824 the Salon included two pictures which may be regarded as important documents in the history of painting. One of these was Constable's Hay Wain—now

PLATE XLV.—EUGÈNE DELACROIX
DANTE AND VIRGIL
Louvre, Paris

in our National Gallery—which had been purchased by a Frenchman; the other was Delacroix's Massacre of Scio, the first to receive the enlightenment afforded by the Englishman's methods, which spread so widely over the French School. It was said that Delacroix entirely repainted his picture on seeing Constable's; but his pupil, Lassalle Bordes, is probably nearer the truth in saying that the master being dissatisfied with its general tone, which was too chalky, transformed it by means of violent glazings. The critics were no less noisy over this picture than the last. "A painter has been revealed to us," said one, "but he is a man who runs along the housetops." "Yes," answered Baudelaire, "but for that one must have a sure foot, and an eye guided by an inward light."

When the Salon opened again in 1827, after an interval of three years, the public were astonished to find how large a number of painters had abandoned Davidism and openly joined the ranks of the enemy. Delacroix himself exhibited the Marino Faliero (now at Hertford House) and eleven others. The gauntlet was flung down, and war began in deadly earnest between the opposing parties. It was at this time that the terms Romanticism and Romantic came into common use. Delacroix always resented being labelled as a Romantic, and would only acknowledge that the term might be justly applied to him when used in its widest signification. "If by my Romanticism," he wrote, "is meant the free expression of my personal impressions, my aversion from the stereotypes invariably produced in the schools, and my repugnance to academic receipts, then I must admit I am Romantic."